By RICK SCHINDLER
NEW YORK – Right from the start of Eels’ new album, Eels Time!, Mark Oliver Everett — the band’s frontman and sole constant over 28 years — lets us know what’s on his mind. “It’s all about time now,” muses the man more commonly known as E. “Tick-tock I rock, but then I look at the clock.”
E is 61 now, an age at which that ticking tends to grow louder. Time and mortality are motifs throughout Eels’ 15th studio album. “Time passes slowly and then it speeds up,” he reflects in “Song for You Know Who.” “There’s no time left to feel bereft” he warns in “If I’m Gonna Go Anywhere.” “Marking time, I feel fine” he sneers in the clever, caustic “Lay With the Lambs.”
Time’s passage has smoothed some of the sharp edges from a songwriter for whom dysfunction and depression have been typical topics going all the way back to “Novocaine for the Soul” in 1996. “Sweet Smile,” for example, is a breezy, uptempo love song. On “I Can’t Believe It’s True,” E is “so grateful for my luck” to have landed a lover he considers out of his league.
But other songs portray relationships as difficult and ephemeral. On “Song for You Know Who,” E admits that “Hearts have been broken if not downright abused.” “Some days I have to ask myself why I wanna put myself through this,” he laments in “And You Run.”
E’s lyrics are succinct, usually rhymed couplets, but while they may sound simple, they’re thoughtful and heartfelt. His arrangements are similarly spare. On the opening track, “Time,” subtle strings accent a gentle music-box melody.
Not all is wistful and sweet, however. On the standout track “If I’m Gonna Go Anywhere,” banshee wails and moans echo over an ominous, plodding beat. The slyly funny “Goldy” is the confession of a guy whose encounters include a girl who’s into furries. “A lotta fish in the sea,”he muses, but in the end,“the only one in the world I need is a goldfish swimming in a bowl.”
“What a mess,” E sighs at the start of the album’s finale, “Let’s Be Lucky,” but then he chooses hope over melancholy. The production, restrained up until now, becomes more ornate; an instrumental refrain builds and Eels Time! closes on a triumphal note. Carpe diem, E urges us: with time ticking away, “It would be a shame/To waste a day like this.”
– Rick Schindler is an award-winning journalist who has written and edited at NBC News Digital, TV Guide and elsewhere. Rick covers music, television and comics, his longtime interest. He is the author of Fandemonium: A Comic Novel. Rick is based in New York City.
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